


Hey, Angel.

by merodautumn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Or at least he thinks he is, harry is a perfect angel, louis is shit, real dramatic shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 15:02:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5131946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merodautumn/pseuds/merodautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He and Harry aren't right- they can't be.<br/>The world is far too black and white for Louis until Harry shows him that the world has too much color.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hey, Angel.

**Author's Note:**

> The prologue.  
> Expect updates every few days/ once a week.  
> 

The earth was once again beginning to still as October slipped away, the absence of warmth in the unmoving air penetrating Louis' peacoat as he stood in silence watching a lone leaf spiral downward to meet the browning grass. His collar was lifted to cover his mouth and most of his nose, each exhale gifting him with a damp wash of heat over the lower half of his face. Liam would pull up in one of his fancy cars soon to take Louis back home. Back home to Liam's house: where Louis tried his best to cough up rent every month but often fell short, despite working his arse off at Holly's every damn day.  
Louis met a girl called Eleanor back in his first year at Uni, and she had landed both herself and Louis a job at a family friend's restaurant after he complained to her of his unemployment. Eleanor said she didn't want to get a job unless she had a friend working alongside her. Holly immediately hired both of them after Eleanor had spoken to her. No application, no interview. Louis had been searching for months, absolutely breaking his back to find a job and no one ever called back. Now he'd been handed a job without lifting a finger.  
Holly was quick to love Louis, just like most people were, and after his very first shift she pulled him away from washing the dishes to let him in on a "little secret."  
"You know," she began, arching one orange eyebrow suggestively, "I think Eleanor fancies you." Her smile, slightly stained by coffee or maybe cigarettes, stretched wide across her face as she clasped her aging hands together, hopeful for Louis' response. He thought to tell her he was taken, but that was a lie.  
"Does she?" he prompted, feigning authenticity. "I don't think so." Eleanor was lovely, but he wasn't interested.  
Months later he'd be fucking her in the restaurant bathroom every time business was slow, which was often.  
Liam's car rolled easily toward the curb and came to a full stop just as the driver seat window had rolled all the way down. He always rolled the window down so he could properly say hello to his friend, Louis, who he always insisted was not at all burdening him by taking up space in his home without being able to properly pay for it. They'd been through it a hundred times. The problem was that each time Liam seemed just as genuine as he'd always seemed about the matter, but Louis wished that he'd be a bit mad about it, or at least annoyed so he didn't have to feel so fucking guilty all the time.  
Louis always felt guilty. In a few months time he knew that he’d kick himself out of Liam’s and onto the street if he couldn’t find a way to pay him. There had been many times when Louis wanted to slip back into his teenage ways of selling with Zayn. Despite everything it cost them in the end, it had been fun and was the quickest way to make money he knew. Zayn was always a bit more professional about it than Louis, but they were both great salesmen. The two soon learned that nothing attracts buyers more than a friendly attitude and a pretty, harmless face.  
He always looked back on his days with Zayn with a faint smile, but each memory was stained murky and dark as if someone had spilled coffee all over each blurry moment of himself and Zayn smiling, laughing, kissing, running, crying, singing, loving each other, the works. They were proper mates, partners in crime. It was the best of times and the worst of times as they say, but now it was over.  
“You’ve got that face on again, Louis,” Liam pointed out as Louis stepped into the car. He said something else that Louis didn’t listen to. The radio was whispering in the background of his noise some sad Amy Winehouse song and Louis felt strangely reminiscent of his once lover, his soulmate, his boy. Liam chattered above the static in Louis’ head the entire car ride, all useless talk and emptiness and he couldn’t stand it anymore. With each passing day he felt himself losing patience with the people around him; why was everyone so fucking happy all the time? What was everyone smiling about? “I know it might be a bit awkward, seeing as he’s friendly with Z and all…”  
“What was that?”  
“Well, they only met a short time ago, I don’t think…”  
“Who? What are you on about, Liam?”  
“Harry, he’s friends with Zayn! Well, I don’t know if they’re like, mates or anything but I know they get on. It shouldn’t be weird though, Harry’s a really nice guy and I’m sure he won’t-”  
“Who the fuck is Harry?”  
Liam rolled his eyes before giving Louis a quick smack. “Do you listen at all?”  
“No,” Louis answered. He was honest.  
“He’s your new fucking coworker, you’re meant to show him the ropes tomorrow night when he comes in for training. I told you about him yesterday, Lou. You really have to listen to me...Anyway I found out today that he knows Z ‘cause he called the house asking for you...I guess Holly didn’t have your cell number to give him. I thought I would give you a fair warning, didn’t want you to worry about it.”  
“He called?” Louis prompted, finally interested. Liam nodded.  
“He wanted to meet up at Holly’s tonight rather than tomorrow, he said it would be more convenient. I said you would give him a call back, and then he mentioned Zayn.”  
“Well that’s just brilliant, isn’t it?”  
“I’m not sure he knows anything. He said he met Zayn a little while ago and that’s how he knows about you, nothing else. I didn’t ask ‘cause I figured it would sound strange.”  
Louis sighed in relief, rubbing at his forehead. ”Yeah, I’ll call him when we’re home. Fucking fix ‘im up tonight and then tomorrow’s settled and I’ve got meself a drinking day, Payno.”

As soon as Louis made it to his room, he dialed the number that Liam gave him. He was ready to get this training business out of the way, so he was glad Harry was requesting to meet him earlier. Louis hoped he’d be decent, or at least easy to talk to.  
The phone rang three times before someone picked up, and then without saying anything, hung up. Louis cursed, wondering if he’d done that accidentally. Immediately his phone rang and it was Harry.  
“Oops,” Harry uttered almost unconsciously into the phone just as Louis brought it to his ear again, following it with a terse giggle.  
“Hi.” Louis waited for Harry to say something else, but he didn’t. “Is...this Harry?”  
“Yep, Louis right? Sorry ‘bout that.” His voice was was deep, muffled by traffic and wind and other voices Louis could hear in the background.  
“Don’t worry about it, mate. I can train you today, I know that’s why you called. What do you say we meet at Hol’s around...like, five? I won’t keep you too long, today’s my Friday after all,” Louis finished, including a forced laugh at the end. He was trying to seem polite or pleasant or something.  
“‘Kay, that’s perfect actually. I haven’t got classes tomorrow either.” Louis noticed his own pacing around the room and pinched his thigh and made himself quit it, sitting still on the bed now. “See you,” Harry continued, inviting an end to the call. Louis could hear how Harry looked, how he was, what he felt. This voice didn’t feel like a stranger’s.  
“Bye,” Louis followed, his voice asking for something more, calling out blindly into the darkness and waiting for another answer, but instead Harry hung up. Louis huffed out a long breath, his heartbeat steadying. He’d never been good at talking on the phone, despite his confidence in person. Even despite that, he wanted to make a good impression. He worried what Harry knew.  
The clock on his bedside table read 3:28 in large, blinking red. Louis combed his fingers through his hair which was always a bit tangled, and decided to shower before heading out. He needed the heat.

The entire master bathroom became thick with fog within minutes, a judge of exactly how hot Louis liked his showers. He liked the water to sting the scratches on his back from Eleanor, it reminded him so much of her touch that burned at his skin every time the clothes started coming off. It reminded him of her moans and her dirty words that she somehow made sound romantic. Louis wanted her to love him, selfishly. He wanted her to tell her friends about him and he wanted her to cry over him while she was alone in bed at night, he wanted her to care.  
She didn’t really care. But neither did Louis.  
He wanted his fucking to mean something. He wanted his kiss and his touch and his words to suffocate her with infatuation for him. He wanted her to lose sleep at night because she just loved him so much she felt her heart could burst, but that was not the truth.  
And he didn’t love her either.  
The difference was that she enjoyed herself. She was ridiculous, so loud when he was inside her, so malleable to his touch. Her thighs would always start to shake long before she was coming.  
Louis put his all into it. He knew what they liked. He could please anyone but himself. He figured if he was going to suffer through sex every time, he should at least be loved, or feel loved. He didn’t really care if she pretended or lied, he just wanted the illusion.  
The pain across his back made it all feel a bit more real, but it would never make it feel good. It would never feel like Zayn.

 

Louis arrived at Holly’s twenty minutes late without any excuse. Harry had gotten there about fifteen minutes early, concerned that Louis held a higher position than just a regular employee, and anyway Harry didn’t like tardiness. He watched Louis enter from his seat at the bar, unaware that this was the man he had been waiting for.  
“Louis!” Holly called out, feigning annoyance with his lateness. She winked and pointed quickly toward Harry, “that’s your partner tonight, babe.” Louis thanked her before finally giving Harry a good look, and the first thing he noticed was his hair that fell to his shoulders in loose curls, then his eyes. His eyes that looked green or blue or perhaps both at the same time. His lips, plump and stained dark against his flesh composed of flower petals, a white ruffled top thrown over his broad shoulders and his long legs wrapped in the tightest pair of black jeans to ever exist, probably...and on his feet, a ridiculous pair of glittery boots. Harry extended his arm toward Louis, asking for his hand to shake, but for a moment all Louis could do was look at those fingers.  
He took Harry’s hand, making eye contact with friendly blue green eyes and he thought of Zayn. He thought of what Zayn may have told Harry. Smiling, he felt sick.

////////////

 

Harry laid there before him, wrapped up in cotton sheets and tucked into himself, unmoving. Louis took long, silent strides toward the bed, wishing to depart from the earth entirely. Mostly he wished to fade away from Harry’s memory just as he deserved. Louis thought he would much prefer it if Harry never knew him at all.  
Should he touch him? Could he touch him? Dare he lay a hand on the angel before him, adorned in cotton and flower petal skin, whose ringlets spiraled and fell softly onto his shoulders rendering those bones a fine powder and the muscles stretched around them delicate?  
Louis knew he didn’t deserve any of it. He was confident that he was the absolute nadir of Harry’s life, that his own presence had tarnished Harry’s forever. With each step closer to the bed he knew he was a shadowy antagonist of- not even Harry, maybe a vision or a dream or a reflection of Harry somehow, but most certainly not a shadow of the authentic. He wasn’t good enough for that to be true. A poisonous antithesis of his own imagination’s fabrication of the idea of a Harry, a polar of what he’d always perceived to be perfection, but the truth is Louis could never properly dream up ‘perfection’ because he was too flawed to understand it. Louis was Harry’s pathetic reverse, perhaps a trial or test-run villain before the real one came around. The problem with all of this was that Harry was actually, genuinely hurt.  
Harry was hurt, and it wasn’t because of any legitimate villain- it was because of Louis.


End file.
